


marigolds

by water_poet



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Burns, F/M, False Accusations, Flowers, Love Potion/Spell, Lowercase, Maybe - Freeform, Morally Ambiguous Character, Orphans, Unrequited Love, Witchcraft, or are they?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-12-01 23:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20927747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_poet/pseuds/water_poet
Summary: "Take my boots" he hears Cass say, and he wants to protest, to say this is Rapunzel's fault, to say she deserves no help, to say it's her father's fault his own is buried in the meadow under the marigolds but he keeps his mouth shut because the snow begins and the flakes land in Cass' hair like stardust.





	marigolds

**Author's Note:**

> Historical AU, Salem-ish?  
Rapunzel as the governor's daughter, Cass as the maid/childhood  
Varian burned as a witch cuz i like to suffer

witches don't cry but his eyes are stinging. they're jeering and howling and screaming like wolves, bloodthirsty and unthinking except for food. they need his blood, not to eat but to smell, to feel, to revel in the red cataracts as they fade to black and the people _consume_.  
  
"You've been accused," says the governor. "How do you plead?"  
  
he doesn't answer. he won't give them the satisfaction of an answer. they watch with hungrily, mouths wet and teeth bared as he stands atop the pyre. he does not meet their eyes.  
  
"Guilty!" the governor's daughter shrieks. "I saw him! He was with the Devil himself, I saw - !"  
  
"Peace!" the governor booms, and Varian laughs. his lips crack under the strain and the dry, hollow sound reverberates through his chest and out into the crowd. they hiss and surge, buoyant upon its waves as they taste his hopelessness.  
  
"How do you plead?" the governor repeats, stern and cold as the autumn sky.  
  
Varian spits and the crowd fades into an uproar, lapping against Varian's temples like sea foam on the sand.

* * *

  
the flowers around his head are garish and make his eyes water but he doesn't mind.  
  
"You look like a king!" Cass says. the sun makes her hair silver and Varian wonders. the angels in their hymns are distant and pure but Cass is rough and solid and warm and he loves her in his childish way.  
  
she lays back on the grass, her skin pale and flushed against the green, daisies kissing at her arms and cheeks.  
  
"I'd like to be king" she says. "I'd let women fight"  
  
he laughs and lays next to her, a bee buzzing in his ear. she smells like firewood and moss and he wonders if he'll ever tell her.  
  
"You don't need a king to let you fight" he says. her laughter is the hushing wind in the trees mixed with the bitter crash of the ocean waves on the sand.  
  
the princess arrives as the sun is turning Cass' hair bronze. she's lavender and butterscotch and her sweetness makes Varian's head ache but Cass is too infatuated to see past the sugar coating.  
  
"Rapunzel!" she says, and the brass bells over the church clang as the princess laughs. she sits in the grass and the perfume of earth and flowers floats up around her.  
  
"Oh, I've the best technique for daisy chains!" the princess says, and she puts her pale, slender hands on Cass' tougher, farm-worn ones and Varian watches. the bees continue to buzz incessantly. his mind grinds and turns and he wonders if he's supposed to feel this way, if this is the kind of forbidden desire the pastor preaches about on sundays while Varian dozes in the back pew, surrounded by wine and leather and dust.  
  
he knows he wants Cass. but he also knows she's as distant from him as the earth is from the moon and when he lies awake at night he can almost imagine the rain is her soft singing, hushed and gentle.

* * *

  
"Will the accusers please rise?"  
  
the princess stands, and for the first time she doesn't look like a princess. she's tired and scared and Varian wonders if he's right to hate her as he has all these years.  
  
"He bewitched me! Made me ill with his potions and bewitched my maid to his company!" she says.  
  
Varian laughs to himself and the ropes around his wrists bite angrily into his skin. Cass says nothing, and he is not afraid.

* * *

  
the princess hates rules that aren't her own so she spends her days sneaking gin from the tavern storeroom and running into the woods to collect nuts and leaves so when she returns from the forest with bare feet and twigs in her hair, Cass and Varian rush her to the brook to hide the evidence.  
  
today the skies are grey, yawning overhead, and Cass's hair is dulled in the absence of the sun, like the cobblestone in the main square. it's cold but Cass' voice is warm and Varian doesn't notice. their breath curls into the sky like smoke.  
  
"Take my boots" he hears Cass say, and he wants to protest, to say this is Rapunzel's fault, to say she deserves no help, to say it's her father's fault his own is buried in the meadow under the marigolds but he keeps his mouth shut because the snow begins and the flakes land in Cass' hair like stardust.  
  
the princess grows ill. Cass won't tell the truth. so the blame falls to Varian and even when he insists he's innocent they refuse because the princess' voice is honey and sunlight and he's the blacksmith's son who whistles with the gap in his teeth and has dirt packed into the grooves of his palm.  
  
Rapunzel gets better and Varian is free. Cass still meets him in the meadow but the princess doesn't join them. it's like old days, when they could lie in the meadow and feel like the world was theirs to have.  
  
it doesn't last.

* * *

  
"Cassandra, is this true?" the governor asks.  
  
Varian closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see her face. he doesn't want to watch her eyes search his, pleading, before dropping to her fidgeting hands as she whispers, "Yes" and the crowd is in uproar again.  
  
when he opens his eyes again, Cass is sitting, head in hands. the princess looks wary. he slips on the wood and it splinters into his feet. the crowd jeers and a rock hits his side. his mouth tastes like copper. Cass is crying and the sky is grey.

* * *

  
one day she falls in love, and it's not with him.  
  
it could never have been him, not in this life or any other, but it hurts all the same.  
  
the ache starts in his stomach and grows and before he knows it the bitterness is rising in his throat like bile and when the man - boy, Varian thinks, a child - next eyes the cut in the back of Cass' dress, where her skin dips into a pale spring valley, Varian balls his fists and punches him.  
  
the fight begins in the square and ends in the foyer of the governor's house while Cass wraps his bloody knuckles.  
  
"Why did you do that? What were you thinking?"  
  
he won't answers so she keeps asking until her throat is sore and only then does he admit. the words pour out of him like a waterfall, rushing and bubbling and roaring. he tells her about the daisies and the callouses on her hands and the way the sun turns her hair silver and gold and bronze as it sets. Cass listens, and when his mouth finally runs dry she holds him and whispers into his hair.  
  
"I love you" she says, and it's not enough.  
  
he bites his lips and the skin cracks. when Cass kisses him the red stains her lower lip, vibrantly blinding against her pale face.  
  
"I've always loved you" he says.  
  
they can't get married. she works for the governor's family in brick kitchens and soft cotton uniforms and he peddles metal trinkets on the street with patches on his boots to keep the cold away. they can't get married, so they don't, and when the princess gets suspicious they hide.  
  
it's midnight and they're in the meadow. the snow lays in patches across the flowers but the leaves are blooming crystalline buds. there's a rip in Cass' dress from climbing out the window of her quarters but she doesn't seem to mind as she stares at the stars.  
  
"Cass?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Would you marry me if I was rich?"  
  
she laughs, warm fog spiraling against the cool night air.  
  
"I'd marry you now if I could" she says.  
  
Varian wonders if she's lying, if there's poison in his veins like they say. after his father's passing, he'd grown used to murmurs about him on the streets, whispers about his hair being the devil's color after killing his mother in childbirth and sending his father to his grave.  
  
once, it had bothered him. he thought maybe he really was cursed.  
  
"She died of an infection, son" his father assured him, before he fell to his own death working on the governor's statue for the town square. it remained unfinished, headless and armless. Varain refused to complete it, and there were no other blacksmiths to contest him.  
  
but now Cass loved him and he remembered the way his blood had glistened on her mouth and he tried to forget.  
  
his honey-gold days seeped into twilight skies the color of tea and Cass presses close to him, lips pressed into his neck.  
  
"Why can't it always be like this?" he asks.  
  
she laughs, comforting like sun-warmed earth. "You know why"  
  
he didn't, and maybe that's why he didn't fight when the local police arrived, a hysterical princess and Cass in tow. they'd been careful but not careful enough. she'd seen them embrace in the hall, blissful and hot, and that was all it took.  
  
Cass was good and Cass was noble and Cass wore nice clothes from the governor's family and ate nice food in the servant's quarters. Cass said she didn't run barefoot through the marigolds in late spring, didn't get the hem of her dress wet in the river trickling over smooth stones and moss, didn't smile when she fisted her hands in Varian's apron and kissed him against the brick wall behind the bakery.  
  
she didn't visit during the week leading to the trial. instead, he sat on the floor and braided loose strands of straw from his pillow. the birds swooped by the windowsill to snatch them away for their nests and he pictured the golden against the dark roughness of the twigs and branches and wondered about the day when Cass would be his to have again.

* * *

  
it's Christmas Eve and her hands are red and chapped around a mug of mead. the bottle in his pocket feels heavy and she smells like lavender.  
  
_tail of newt, eye of daisy, salted rainwater_  
  
"I didn't get you anything" she says.  
  
the show falls, dotting her shoulders like ashes and his throat aches like he can't quite breathe.  
  
"I didn't get you anything either" he lies, and the glass burns hot against his thigh.  
  
the mead glows golden on her upper lip in the firelight. she stares through heavily lidded eyes, sharp lips curled into a smile, and he knows she loves him and it feels like a cold fist is closing around his throat.  
  
_silver dust, heart of butterfly, lash of cow_  
  
"Your hair" she says, voice high with wonderment. she reaches for him, and his breath catches in his chest when she traces the silver streak in his hair.  
  
"How'd it happen?" she asks.  
  
he shrugs because she already knows but her eyes are dark and the mead is flaming red in the firelight so he relents.  
  
"I was born with it. But my mom always said it was a moon goddess' kiss" he says.  
  
_stir clockwise twice under a half-waxing moon_  
  
"Do you miss her?" she asks.  
  
_ say their name thrice at midnight when the moon is highest_  
  
"I don't know" he says, which is true. he barely knew this mother. he wondered if she'd be proud.  
  
"I wish I knew my parents" Cass says.  
  
"Me too" Varian says.  
  
the fire burns and the snow continues to fall onto his hair and his nose and the rough wool of his cloak as he shudders.  
  
"Here" she says, and he drinks because its wasn't made for him and when he looks again she's just as beautiful as ever.  
  
"I love you" she says.  
  
_ Cassandra, Cassandra, Cassandra_  
  
"I love you, too" he says, and he's not so sure anymore.

* * *

  
the fire is catching and he tells himself he is not afraid.  
  
flames are lapping at his bare legs like marigolds in the field and somehow there is no pain.  
  
he wants to speak. he opens his mouth and the crowd rustles like dry autumn leaves, ready for his screams.  
  
"Cassandra!" he says, and she looks up.  
  
her eyes are like oceans and suddenly he knows. tears streak down her face in pearly droplets, and he feels his own cheeks grow cold amidst the flame.  
  
_Cassandra, Cassandra, Cassandra._  
  
for a moment, he sees the marigolds and the daisies and feels the heat of the summer on his skin.  
  
Varian looks up.  
  
the sky is silver like Cass' hair when the sun is shining in the meadow and the world is quiet at last.

**Author's Note:**

> im literally posting this like four years too late oh wellll
> 
> so glad they redeemed my son, he deserves the world
> 
> (can you tell I've read the sound and the fury eight too many times)


End file.
